Security Systems News - Silent Knight by Honeywell Farenhythttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/taxonomy/term/3478
enComplete Fire Protection now ‘complete’http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/complete-fire-protection-now-complete
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<div class="field-item even">Company expands its offerings and focuses on service</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2011-12-14T00:00:00-05:00">12/14/2011</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Tess Nacelewicz</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>BALTIMORE—Complete Fire Protection expanded its focus last summer, transforming from a company that concentrated on fire extinguisher and kitchen hood work to being a full-service fire alarm, life safety company, said company VP Michael Ferro.</p>
<p>“Complete Fire Protection—it is complete,” Ferro told <em>Security Systems News</em>. “We do sprinkler, we do fire alarm, we do design, consulting, we do everything. … But our main focus, we like to say, is service.”</p>
<p>And it’s that service component—such as maintenance, inspections and 24/7 emergency service—that is helping the company thrive in the down economy, said Ferro, who said he led the expansion of the company, which is based here, when he was hired five months ago. “We stress service, good service,” he said. “We do quality service for quality money.”</p>
<p>“Our gross profit margin is around 46 percent,” Ferro told SSN, saying the industry average is 30 to 33 percent. “Our GPM is up, we keep it up and that’s because of the work we do.”</p>
<p>Complete Fire focuses on property management clients who manage high-end multi-unit residential properties or multi-unit commercial properties, he said. “We like big,” said Ferro, an 18-year industry veteran who previously worked for Siemens and other large companies.</p>
<p>He said property management clients manage multiple sites and “I’ve found they take care of their properties.”</p>
<p>“That’s what we focus on because of the quality of the account,” Ferro said of the eight-employee company, which he said was founded by president Dave Lipscomb several years ago. “These are people who care about life safety, who want good work and want to make sure stuff is right and not cut corners.”</p>
<p>Among Complete Fire’s clients are three high-rise towers in Philadelphia, each with 865 condos, and a 200-acre business park with 26 commercial buildings in Maryland, he said. From its Baltimore office, the company services that state, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, some of New Jersey and Washington, D.C., Ferro said.</p>
<p>He said that in this economy, the company doesn’t do a lot of installation work because he contends larger companies are doing it for cost, a price Complete Fire can’t accept. “I’ll do a lot less install work than most people because I’m not going to give the work away,” Ferro said.</p>
<p>He said working for cost means a rush job where quality is compromised, and he said he won’t accept that in life safety.</p>
<p>“I don’t just take any job,” Ferro said. “If you want something done and done right, you call me.”</p>
<p>He said that’s a reason why Complete Fire is a Silent Knight by Honeywell Farenhyt authorized distributor. “They stand behind their product and they put out quality stuff,” he said.</p>
<p>Ferro said that in this economy, fire companies shouldn’t use the “hard sell” and try to get customers to buy new equipment when what they have can be fixed.</p>
<p>“You’ve got to go in there and give these people preferred service,” he said. “You have to say, ‘What are your needs?’ and give them a couple of different options. You can say, ‘I can install it, and it’s going to cost ‘x,’ but I can fix it for this and I can save you a ton of money.’ You have to be creative today.”</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Complete Fire Protection now ‘complete’" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:18:30 +0000Tess Nacelewicz15123 at http://www.securitysystemsnews.comhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/complete-fire-protection-now-complete#commentsOutsmarting economy with parts, smartshttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/outsmarting-economy-parts-smarts
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<div class="field-item even">California-based Low Voltage Solutions also says building relationships key to success</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2011-09-29T00:00:00-04:00">09/29/2011</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Tess Nacelewicz</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>VENTURA, Calif.—Jeff Borrelli, president and owner of Low Voltage Solutions, a Silent Knight by Honeywell Farenhyt distributor based here, said specializing in the “parts and smarts” of fire alarm systems has helped the company stay busy in the down economy.</p>
<p>“We let our customers make money off the fire alarm by only doing the parts and smarts,” Borrelli told <em>Security Systems News</em>. “We normally work for the electrical contractors, and they get to make money installing our stuff and we get to make money on the parts and smarts. That’s worked out well for us.”</p>
<p>The work of the three-employee company, founded 10 years ago, is 95 percent commercial fire work, he said. Projects range from schools and college campuses to businesses to military and government institutions, he said.</p>
<p>Low Voltage’s current projects include two Santa Barbara icons: the Granada Theatre, a cultural landmark that is the tallest building in Santa Barbara; and the historic Santa Barbara County Courthouse, which draws visitors from around the world.</p>
<p>The theater is a nine-story building, with residential units on the top floors, offices on the middle floors and the theater, built in 1924, on the bottom. It was recently restored at a cost of more than $50 million.<br />Low Voltage was involved in replacing the fire alarm system. Borrelli said a challenge in the job was keeping the old system running while the theater was being renovated so the other occupants of the building were protected while the new one was installed.</p>
<p>The company then moved on to adding a new system in the rest of the building. “We’re working on the last residential unit now,” Borrelli told SSN.</p>
<p>At the courthouse, Borrelli said the company is involved in adding the first fire alarm system ever in the historic building, which takes up an entire city block. The building was built in 1929 after a 1925 earthquake destroyed much of the city, according to a state web site. Borrelli said the interior of the building is predominantly metal with very little wood and has non-flammable plaster, but a modern fire alarm system is being added for greater protection.</p>
<p>An electrical contractor is doing the installation at both sites but Low Voltage oversees their work and does everything else, he said.</p>
<p>“We do the drawings, we engineer the system, we get it approved by the fire department, we pull a permit, and we sell the electrical contractor our equipment,” said Borrelli, who said he recently earned his NICET Level IV, using the Granada Theatre building as his required major project. “They go by our drawings, we oversee them—we have most of them already trained—and then we program it at the end and get it signed off by the fire department.”</p>
<p>Another key to success as a parts-and-smarts company is building relationships with contractors and AHJ’s, Borrelli said. He’s worked with a lot of contractors and counts them and fire officials as friends, he said.<br />Also, he said, “We have quite a good reputation in the Santa Barbara community.”</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Outsmarting economy with parts, smarts" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:08:17 +0000SSN Editor14973 at http://www.securitysystemsnews.comhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/outsmarting-economy-parts-smarts#comments